Institutional Aggression Evaluation

Individual factors such as age, education level and race in prison and society support the importation model.

Data collected from 58 US prisons and found that black inmates had higher rates of violent behaviour but lower rates of alcohol-related and drug-related misconduct than white inmates.

These patterns run parallel to those found in US society.

Because parallels have been found, it suggests that people take their social histories with them when they enter prison, supporting the importation model.

(+) Deprivation model; research support.

Found that overcrowding lack of privacy and lack of meaningful activity all significantly influence peer violence.

This therefore supports the deprivation model as it shows how situational factors to do with a prison can effect aggression.

(-) However unreliable findings.

Research in Psychiatric institutions found that increased personal space failed to decrease the level of violence among prisoners.

(+) Hazing - social context

Found that hazing is also used to establish dominance in institutions other than colleges.

Found that in prisons, domination of the weak was seen by inmates as essential to maintaining status, with passive behaviour generally being interpreted as weakness.

Therefore, because hazing can be seen in multiple contexts, the validity of the explanation is increased.

(-) Obedience to Authority

Rejection of idea that obedience to authority was sufficient to explain the behaviour of the Holocaust.

Argued that Milgrams idea is monocausal (ignores other possible causes) and simply does not match the historical record.

Suggested that actually the main causal factor in the atrocities was a form on anti-Semitism so deeply entrenched in the German people that they implicitly condoned the elimination of millions of innocent Jews.

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Problems of definition

Therefore methodological and ethical issues of investigation.

The study of institutional aggression creates special problems for the researcher.

In many studies, victims of hazing reject researchers definition of it as aggressive.

Similarly, although dehumanisation appears to be a common phenomena, it's hard to empirically investigate.

Due to the methodological issues of investigation in institutional aggression research, it can be hard to ensure studies are testing what they set out to test, therefore affecting internal validity.

Therefore such studies do not provide good evidence to support explanations of aggression.

Protection from harm issues with studying victims as may become distressed recalling aggression.

Real world application

We can use insights into dehumanisation to explain a fairly recent social phenomenon - violence against foreign refugees or asylum seekers.

Recent research suggests that personality may play an important role in this respect.

Social dominance orientation is a personality variable which predicts social and political attitudes. People who are high in SDO endorse a social hierarchy and inter-group inequality, and see the world as a 'competitive jungle'.

Been demonstrated that individuals high in SDO have a tendency to dehumanise outgroup members, and in particular foreign refugees and asylum seekers.

These negative attitudes become rationalised through 'legitimising myths' which indicate to the high SDO individual that these groups deserve our hostility because they are somehow less human than others.